Indonesia is the fourth most populated country in the world and is a major producer of agricultural products. With 45% of the population living in rural areas, agriculture is largely dominated by smallholder farmers (>90%), takes up 32% of the total land area of the country, average accounts for 14% of GDP, and yet agricultural production faces several major challenges. The proportion of income from off-farm activities is increasing, while agriculture remains a highly labor-intensive sector and the costs of agricultural inputs are high. 

Through the latest Ministerial Regulation (PERMENTAN No. 7 Year 2020), Indonesia’s Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) has identified key priorities, including two for immediate attention related to improving the digital agriculture. At the same time, the food System transformation is becoming one of national priorities that have been highlighted in the Indonesia 5-Year National Development Plan (RPJMN) 2020-2024 and the Vision 2045 with the aim of becoming one of the top world economies by 2045. 

The food system transformation aims at ensuring continuous and sustainable availability and accessibility of high nutritional value food commodities for all people. At the same time, MoA needs high-tech platform to compile real-time data to access the transparent information and the provenance of products goes to the market, which will support another ministry’s initiative and priorities called ‘GRATIEKS’ (Gerakan Tiga Kali Ekspor/ Three-fold Export Movement). 

Moreover, to formulate evidence-based policy, MoA requires valid and comprehensive data and information about parameters such as land areas under cultivation, productivity and production, marketing channels, commodity prices, stability of food systems including threats to production, diversification of consumption, and food safety. In addition, anticipatory actions, through EWS (Early Warning System), have the potential to reduce the impact of specific disaster events. Furthermore, strengthening the centralized mechanism for data management is very important to provide timely and reliable data for the decision maker/ stakeholders. 

To address the above challenges and to take advantage of emerging digital opportunities, it is important to develop a comprehensive strategy based on identified gaps and needs, building on existing frameworks and capacities to support MoA in harnessing data and information resources to be able to achieve the agriculture vision of Indonesia (Indonesian’ Vision 2045, Ministry of Bappenas, 2018). Since 2005, MoA through Centre for Agricultural Data and System Information (CADIS) already started to move toward digitization of data especially for production data through online reporting. 

Therefore, the project “Strengthening digital agricultural monitoring capacities using e-agriculture in Indonesia” (TCP/INS/3805) aims at developing a national e-agriculture strategy plan in support to national strategic plans and programs, an e-agriculture strategy enhanced with stronger guidance on agriculture data integrity, in particular with regards to the use of geospatial information, and strengthening national and provincial technical capacities to operationalise and maintain the digital agriculture services and solutions.